Christina Perry, PhD

Dr. Perry is the Chair of the Department of Health, Exercise and Sports Sciences (HESS). She has served in this position for nearly four years and is proud to be an advocate for her department who she describes as excellent staffers and teachers, productive researchers and those committed to serving students and New Mexico communities and schools.

Dr. Perry grew up in an Irish/Hispanic family and was raised in a suburb of Chicago during the school year and in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the summer months. She earned her master’s degree in Health Education/Teacher Education at Southern Illinois University and her Ph.D. in Community Health Education at UNM.

Dr. Perry’s areas of expertise are the development and evaluation of community and school-based prevention programs for children and adolescents. Her work has been applied to adolescent dieting practices, smokeless tobacco use, pediatric physical activity and snacking choices, college binge-drinking, health-seeking behaviors of adolescents in school-based health centers, and food safety practices of young families. Much of her work has been translated into evidence-based curricula designed for elementary and middle-school aged children.

Dr. Perry enjoys cycling, gardening, golfing with husband Scott, and reading historical biographies and current events. Currently, she is reading Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity by Scott Galloway and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. When asked about what she enjoys most about New Mexico she answers, the smells! The smell of raw earth after a desert rain, chili roasting in early fall, and the scent of piñon burning when walking the local neighborhoods. Red or green? Yes!